Somebody interrupted. And now it's long past midnight. I must try to
send you some answer to your letter. I have been thinking--the
combination may strike you as odd--of North Baxter Court and you. Not
that the happenings of yesterday were unusual. That is just it--they
come almost every day, things like that. And you, with your birds and
rustling trees and your lake--you keep a shiny pistol in the drawer of
your dressing-table, and write me the sort of letter that came from you
this morning. When all these people need _you_--these blind, dumb
animals, stumbling through the sordid, hopeless years--need you,
because, in spite of everything, you are still so much further along
than they, because you are capable of seeing where their eyes are shut,
because you and your kind can help them, and put the germ of life into
the deadness of their days, because of all that makes you what you are,
and gives you the chance to become infinitely more--you, in the face of
all that, can sit down in the fragrance of a garden-scented breeze and
write as you have done about God and the things that matter.
You said that it was not flippancy. Your whole point of view is wrong.
Do not ask me how I "know"--some conclusions do not need to be
analyzed. I wonder if you realize, for instance, what you said about
faith? I haven't the charity to call it even childish. Have you ever
got below the surface of anything at all? Do you want to know what it
is that has brought you to the verge of suicide? It is not your horror
of illness, nor your oddly concluded determination to marry a man whom
you do not love. Suicide is an ugly word--I notice that you avoid
it--and love is a big word; I am using them understandingly and
soberly. You came to the edge of this thing for the reason that there
is not an element of bigness in your life, and there never has been.
You lack the balance of large ideas. This man of whom you tell me--of
course you do not love him--you have not yet the capacity for
understanding the meaning of the word. You like to ride and you like
to dance and you are fond of the things that please, but you do not
love anybody or even any thing. You are living, yes, but you are
asleep. And it is because you are ignorant.
If your letter had been designedly flippant, it would merely have
annoyed. It is the unconscious flippancy in it that is so
discouraging. You do not know what you believe because you believe
nothing. Your most coherent conception of God is likely a hazy vision
of a majestic figure seated on a cloud--a long-bearded patriarch,
wearing a golden crown--the composite of famous pictures that you
have seen. You have been taught to believe in a personal God,
and you have never taken the trouble to get beyond the notion that
personality--God's or anybody's--is mainly a matter of the possession
of such things as hands and feet. What can be the meaning to one like
you of the truth that we are made in the image of God? The Kingdom of
Heaven--that whole whirling activity of the commonwealth of God--the
citizenship towards which you might be pointing Baxter Court--you
have not even imagined it. I am not being sentimental. Don't
misunderstand. Don't fancy, for instance, that I am exhorting you to
go slumming. Deliberately or not, you took a wrong impression from my
first letter. You can't mistake this. Reach after a few of the
realities. Why not shut your questioning mind a while and open your
soul? _Live_ a little--begin to realize that there is a world outside
yourself. Try to get beyond the view-point of a child. And, if I have
not angered you beyond words, let me know how you get on.
The unconventionality of this correspondence, you see, is not all on
one side. If you found English to your taste in what I wrote before,
this time you have plain truths, perhaps less satisfactory. You are
not in a position to decide some matters. I do not ask you to let me
decide them for you. I have only tried to indicate some reasons why
you must wait before you act. And I think it has made you angry. One
has to risk that. Yesterday I could not have imagined sending a letter
like this to anybody. But it goes--and to you. I ask you to answer
it. I think you owe me that. It hasn't been exactly easy to write.
One more thing--don't trust letters to stand between you and the toy in
the dressing-table drawer. Any barrier there, to be in the least
effective, will have to be of your own building.
GEOFFREY McBIRNEY.
About a month after the above letter had been received, on September
10th, Geoffrey McBirney, dashing down the three flights of stairs in
the Parish House from his quarters on the top floor, peered into the
letter-box on the way to morning service. He peered eagerly. There
had been no answer to his letter; it was a month; he was surprisingly
uneasy. But there was nothing in the mail-box, so he swept along to
the vestry-room, and got into his cassock and read service to the
handful of people in the chapel, with a sense of sick depression which
he manfully choked down at every upheaval, but which was distinctly
there quite the same. Service over, there were things to be done for
three hours; also there was to be a meeting in his rooms at twelve
o'clock to consider the establishment of a new mission, his special
interest, in the rough country at the west of the city; the rector and
the bishop and two others were coming. He hurried home and up to his
place, at eleven-forty-five, and gave a hasty look about to see if
things were fairly proper for august people. Not that the bishop would
notice. He dusted off the library table with his handkerchief, put one
book discreetly on the back side of the table instead of in front,
swept an untidy box of cigarettes into a drawer, and gathered up the
fresh pile of wash from a chair and put it on the bed in his
sleeping-room and shut the door hard. Then he gazed about with the air
of a satisfied housekeeper. He lifted up a loudly ticking clock which
would not go except lying on its face, and regarded it. Five minutes
to twelve, and they were sure to be late. He extracted a cigarette
from the drawer and lighted it; his thoughts, loosened from immediate
pressure, came back slowly, surely, to the empty mailbox, his last
letter, the girl whom he knew grotesquely as "August First." Why had
she not written for four weeks? He had considered that question from
many angles for about three weeks, and the question rose and confronted
him, always new, at each leisure moment. It was disproportionate, it
showed lack of balance, that it should loom so large on the horizon,
with the hundred other interests, tragedies, which were there for him;
but it loomed.
Why had he written her that hammer-and-tongs answer? he demanded of
himself, not for the first time. Of course, it was true, but when one
is drowning, one does not want reams of truth, one wants a rope. He
had stood on the shore and lectured the girl, ordered her to strike out
and swim for it, and not be so criminally selfish as to drop into the
ocean; that was what he had done. And the girl--what had she done?
Heaven only knew. Probably gone under. It looked more so each day.
Why could he not have been gentler, even if she was undeveloped,
narrow, asleep? Because she was rich--he answered his own question to
himself--because he had no belief in rich people; only a hard distrust
of whatever they did. That was wrong; he knew it. He blew a cloud of
smoke to the ceiling and spoke aloud, impatiently. "All the same,
they're none of them any good," said Geoffrey McBirney, and directed
himself to stop worrying about this thing. And with that came a sudden
memory of a buoyant, fresh voice saying tremendous words like a gentle
child, of the blue flash of eyes only half seen in a storm-swept
darkness, of roses bobbing.
McBirney flung the half-smoked cigarette into the fireplace and lifted
the neurotic clock: twelve-twenty. The postman came again at twelve.
He would risk the rector and the bishop. Down the stairs he plunged
again and brought up at the mail-box. There was a letter. Hurriedly,
he snatched it out and turned the address up; a miracle--it was from
the girl. The street door darkened; McBirney looked up. The rector
and the bishop were coming in, the others at their heels. He thrust
the envelope into his pocket, his pulse beating distinctly faster, and
turned to meet his guests.
When at three o'clock he got back to his quarters, after an exciting
meeting of an hour, after lunch at the rectory, after seeing the bishop
off on the 2.45 to New York, he locked his door first, and then
hurriedly drew out the letter lying all this time unread. He tore
untidily at the flap, and with that suddenly he stopped, and the
luminous eyes took on an odd, sarcastic expression. "What a fool!" he
spoke, half aloud, and put the letter down and strolled across the room
and gazed out of the window. "What an ass! I'm allowing myself to get
personally interested in this case; or to imagine that I'm personally
interested. Folly. The girl is nothing to me. I'll never see her
again. I care about her as I would about anybody in trouble.
And--that's all. This lunacy of restlessness over the situation has
got--to--stop." He was firm with himself. He sat down at his table
and wrote a business note before he touched the letter again; but he
saw the letter out of the tail of his eye all the time and he knew his
pulse was going harder as, finally, he lifted the torn envelope with
elaborate carelessness, and drew out the sheets of writing.
My dear Mr. McBirney [the girl began], did anybody ever tell a story
about a big general who limbered up his artillery, if that's the thing
they do, and shouted orders, and cracked whips and rattled wheels and
went through evolutions, and finally, with thunder and energy, trained
a huge Krupp gun--or something--on a chipmunk? If there is such a
story, and you've heard it, doesn't it remind you of your last letter
at me? Not to me, I mean _at_ me. It was a wonderful letter again,
but when I got through I had a feeling that what I needed was not
suicide--I do dare say the word, you see--but execution. Maybe
shooting is too good for me. And you know I appreciate every minute
how unnecessary it is for you to bother with me, and to put your time
and your strength, both of which mean much to many people, into
hammering me. And how good you are to do that. I am worthless, as you
say between every two lines. Yet I'm a soul--you say that too, and so
on a par with those tragic souls in North Baxter Court. Only, I feel
that you have no patience with me for getting underfoot when you're on
your way to big issues. But do have patience, please--it means as much
to me as to anybody in your tenements. I'm far down, and I'm
struggling for breath, and there seems to be no land in sight, nothing
to hold to except you. I'm sorry if you dislike to have it so, but it
is so; your letters mean anchorage. I'd blow out to sea if I didn't
have them to hope for. You ought to be glad of that; you're doing
good, even if it is only to a flippant, shallow, undeveloped doll. I
can call myself names--oh yes.
I have been slow answering, though likely you haven't noticed [McBirney
smiled queerly], because I have been doing a thing. You said you
didn't advise me to go slumming--though I think you did--what else?
You said I ought to get beyond the view-point of a child; to realize
the world outside myself.
I sat down, and in my limited way--I mean that, sincerely, humbly--I
considered what I could do. No slumming--and, in any case, there's
none to be done in Forest Gate. So I thought I'd better clear my
vision with great books. I went to Robert Halarkenden, the only
bookish person in my surroundings, and asked him about it--about what
would open up a larger horizon for me. And he, not understanding much
what I was at, recommended two or three things which I have been and am
reading. I thought I'd try to be a little more intelligent at least
before I answered your letter. Don't thunder at me--I'm stumbling
about, trying to get somewhere. I've read some William James and some
John Fiske, and I realize this--that I did more or less think God was a
very large, stately old man. An "anthropomorphic deity." Fiske says
that is the God of the lower peoples; that was my God. Also I realize
this--that, somehow, some God, _the_ God if I can get to Him, might
help might be my only chance. What do you think? Is this any better?
Is it any step? If it is, it's a very precarious one, for though it
thrills me to my bones sometimes to think that a real power might lift
me and bring me through, if I just ask Him, yet sometimes all that hope
goes and I drop in a heap mentally with no starch in me, no grip to try
to hold to any idea--just a heap of tired, dull mind and nerves, and
for my only desire that subtle, pushing desire to end it all quickly.
Once an odd thing happened. When I was collapsed like that, just
existing, suddenly there was a feeling, a brand-new feeling of letting
go of the old rubbish that was and somebody else pervading it through
and through and taking all the responsibility. And I held on tight,
something as I do to your letters, and the first thing, I was believing
that help was coming--and help came. That was the best day I've had
since I saw those devil doctors. Do you suppose that was faith? Where
did it come from? I'd been praying--but awfully queer prayers; I said
"Oh just put me through somehow; give me what I need; _I_ don't know
what it is; how can you expect me to--I'm a worm." I suppose that was
irreverent, but I can't help it. It was all I could say. And that
came, whatever it was. Do you suppose it was an answer to my blind,
gasping prayer?
Now I'm going to ask you to do a thing--but don't if it's the least
bother. I don't want you to talk to me about myself just now, any
more. And I want to hear more about North Baxter Court and such. You
don't know how that stirred me. What a worth-while life you lead,
doing actual, life-and-death things for people who bitterly need things
done. It seems to me glorious. I could give up everything to feel a
stream of genuine living through me such as you have, all your rushing
days. Yes--I could--but yet, maybe I wouldn't make good. But I do
care for "life, and life more abundantly," and the only way of getting
it that I've known has been higher fences to jump, and more dances and
better tennis and such. I never once realized the way you get it--my!
what a big way. And how heavenly it must be to give hope and health
and help to people. I adore sending the maids out in the car, or
giving them my clothes. I just selfishly like pleasing people, and I
think giving is the best amusement extant--and you give your very self
from morning to night. You lucky person! How could I do that? Could
I? Would I balk, do you think? You say I'm not capable of loving
anything or anybody. I think you are wrong. I think I could, some
day, love somebody as hard as any woman or man has, ever. Not Alec.
What will happen if I marry Alec and then do that--if the somebody
comes? That would be a mess; the worst mess yet. The end of the
world; but I forget; my world ends anyhow. I'll be a stone image in a
chair--a cold, unloveable stone image with a hot, boiling heart. I
won't--I _won't_. This world is just five minutes, maybe--but me--in a
chair--ten years. Oh--I _won't_.
What I want you to do is to write me just about the things you're
doing, and the people--the poor people, and the pitiful things and the
funny things--the atmosphere of it. Could you forget that you don't
know me, and write as you would to a cousin or an old friend? That
would be good. That would help. Only, anyhow, write, for without your
letters I can't tell what bomb may burst. Don't thunder next time.
But even if you thunder, write. The letters do guard the pistol--I
can't help it if you say not. It has to be so now, anyway. They guard
it. Always--